After disk upgrade, receiving message about losing all changed settings when restart or shutdown.

[ArtS457]

Since upgrading the disks in my RN312 from 3TB to 4TB disks (WD40EFAX)  I get the following warnings when selecting shutdown or shutdown in the GUI:

I clearly have 2 volumes that seem to be working just fine and are considered “Healthy” as reported in the GUI’s “Status”. Shutting down or rebooting seems to work as expected, as the system comes up fine.

I have upgraded disks on this NAS a few years ago and followed the same process of replacing one disk at a time, waiting for the volumes to resync before replacing the 2nd drive. I didn’t have this problem then.

• Anyone have any idea how I can get rid of this disturbing and seemingly bogus warning?

Thanks in advance!

[ArtS457 · Accepted solution]

Problem solved. It was the browser, believe it or not.

I accessed the NAS GUI from another computer which has Firefox on it and the warning about not having a volume was not presented when shutitng down the NAS> 

My Desktop uses Chrome, which always presents that warning. I brought up FireFox on the desktop and no warning was presented.

So, there must be some Javascript intrepretation difference between Chrome and Firefox that causes this.

Art

[StephenB]

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@ArtS457 wrote:

Since upgrading the disks in my RN312 from 3TB to 4TB disks (WD40EFAX)  ...

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Unfortunately, not a good disk choice.  The WD40EFAX (like other drives in the current WD Red line) uses SMR technology - which isn't good for RAID (particularly RAID combined with ZFS or BTRFS file systems).  Others here have reported issues with these drives (although I haven't seen your particular error here before).  The WD Red Plus line contains the CMR drives - which I do recommend (and use myself).  Seagate Ironwolf are also CMR, and work well in ReadyNAS.

If you do a bit of googling, you'll find a lot more about SMR performance (and the mess WDC got into a couple years ago when they silently slipped SMR drives into the WD Red lineup).

If you can still exchange the WD40EFAX for WD40EFRX (Red Plus) with the seller, I recommend that you do that.

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@ArtS457 wrote:

I clearly have 2 volumes

FWIW, you have 2 disks, with one volume.  Calling the individual disks "volumes" can create confusion when troubleshooting here.

[ArtS457]

Thanks for the warning about the SMR drive. I just found an article about them on ARS Technica and see what you mean. 

I'll need to consider my options for switching to something else. However, I put put the original disks back in the NAS (WD30EFRX) and still receive the warning from my original post. 

I'd like to get that issue resolved before moving on to another disk upgrade.

Art

[StephenB]

Do you have a backup of the data?

[ArtS457]

Not a complete ReadyNAS backup but I do have most folders backed up to cloud storage. I also have the old 3TB disks.

[StephenB]

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@ArtS457 wrote:

Not a complete ReadyNAS backup but I do have most folders backed up to cloud storage. I also have the old 3TB disks.

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You could try an OS reinstall from the boot menu and see if that solves it. I don't think the odds are high, but it is safe to try.  

The other option (painful) is to do a factory default, and build the volume from scratch (restoring files from your backups).

[ArtS457]

I've been contemplating the build from scratch approach but the OS reinstall is a good thought. I'll try it in the morning and post my results.

[ArtS457 · Accepted solution]

Problem solved. It was the browser, believe it or not.

I accessed the NAS GUI from another computer which has Firefox on it and the warning about not having a volume was not presented when shutitng down the NAS> 

My Desktop uses Chrome, which always presents that warning. I brought up FireFox on the desktop and no warning was presented.

So, there must be some Javascript intrepretation difference between Chrome and Firefox that causes this.

Art